Israeli Citizens to Tshwane University of Technology - Please do not Cooperate with Israeli Universities

October 2016

Israeli Citizens to Tshwane University of Technology - Please do not Cooperate with Israeli Universities

To the administration of Tshwane University of Technology,

We are Israeli citizens active against our government’s policies of racism, occupation and apartheid. In response to the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, we have formed a group which promotes this call. We are troubled by reports about possible institutional collaboration between the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) and Israeli universities. We call on you not to engage in such cooperation.

Israeli universities collaborate with the Israeli apartheid regime on military research and development of weapons used by the Israeli army against the Palestinian people. This collaboration includes the ideological support of Israel’s criminal assault on Gaza in 2014 by the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University.[2] Tel Aviv University provided one year of free tuition to students who served in the attack on Gaza. “Private donors” and “friends of the university” funded these scholarships. Tel Aviv University President Joseph Klafter thanked students for serving and said “Tel Aviv University has contributed and still contributes greatly to national security”.[3]

Another university, the Technion, is involved in the Israeli military-industrial complex far more than any other university.[4] The Institute carries out research in a wide range of technologies and weapons used to oppress and attack Palestinians. One of the Technion’s best-known projects led to the development of remote control functions on the Caterpillar “D9” bulldozer, used by the Israeli army to demolish Palestinian homes and the implementation of a method for detecting underground tunnels, developed specifically to maintain Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip.[5]

The operation of the vast Israeli military-industrial complex largely depends on the willingness of governments, companies, and research centers around the world to collaborate with universities and research centers in Israel. The longstanding and active ties which Israeli universities maintain with the Israeli military and the weapons industry make them directly complicit in Israeli violations of international law. Accordingly, cooperation with Israeli universities is tantamount to playing an active part in Israel’s regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid and, as such, in the system of oppression that denies Palestinians their most basic human rights.

We would like to note that a growing number of universities[6], associations, or individual academics, including South Africans[7] , have protested against the collaboration with Israeli universities and research centers, complicit in violations of international law and human rights.

We, therefore, call on scholars and researchers in South Africa to end all forms of complicity with the Israeli military-industrial complex. We also urge you to suspend all forms of institutional academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli universities, until Israel ends its systematic violations against the Palestinian people